So it’s Mardi Gras day.
I’m in Rouse’s (a grocery store) looking for something yummy to take to
the Biloxi parade, where I will be with my Mom, brother, sis-in-law, Nieces 1
and 2, and the whole in-law clan. It
should be a fun day. I am marginally
excited (I mean, I am up early and in a grocery store, I’m as excited as I’m
gonna GET about that), and then…
I need to call my Mom to get her approval on what I’m
getting.
I need to call.
CALL. On the phone.
I’m standing there looking at the trays of mini muffulettas,
looking for the phone icon on my cellphone, which I have hidden from normal
view for reasons which will soon become evident. I see that my hands are shaking. As I look at my phone, a woman comes up and
grabs all but 1 of the muffuletta trays, so I panic and grab the last one, then
go back to trying to call Mom.
I could go to recent calls and just click that, but that is
a facetime, not a regular call. I don’t
want to facetime in the grocery store. I’m
not THAT girl. So, I figure out how to
call her. My anxiety at this point is
about a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. She
answers, I say hey, she can’t hear me, we talk over each other. My anxiety is now a 6. OK now we can hear each other, so I start
telling her about the mini muffulettas, and then the call drops.
Now I’m at about an 8.
She immediately tries to call me back on facetime. I bite her head off (completely undeservedly)
and say I don’t want to facetime in the middle of the grocery. I’m sure she
thinks I’m just being bitchy, and I AM.
What I can’t explain is that I am now at a 9, and my brain has taken me
smack-dab back to September of 2005, sitting in a mildewy hotel conference call
surrounded by 10 or more phones RINGING OFF THE HOOK, and on the end of EVERY
one of those calls is a person with a story I am not equipped to hear.
I get the stuff at Rouse’s, all while reliving those calls
and stories in my head. I am thinking
about those calls at the checkout. I’m
thinking about those days after on the way home to my Mom’s cottage. I am thinking about the worst of those
stories. Seeing, in my head, the scenes
I can’t ever forget. Thinking about all
those people. All those animals…
I can’t control it.
I get to Mom’s, and I’m down to about a 5. My hands are still shaking a little, but I
have done some serious soul-searching in the meantime and I have come to some
realizations.
1>
I’m an accountant, not a psychiatrist, but I
think this may be some legit form of PTSD.
2>
I very much feel like I don’t have any RIGHT to
have any form of PTSD. I didn’t lose anyone. I didn’t lose my house, my
business, my car, my school... I didn’t have to deal with insurance
companies. It only took me a few DAYS to
find out that everyone in my family was ok, not WEEKS. I feel like I don’t DESERVE the knot in my
stomach. I haven’t earned it.
3>
Then, I think about one of the youtube videos I
watched recently, I wish I could remember who, and her words came back to me…
“I feel guilty for feeling this
way, but the fact of the matter is, this is still the worst thing that has ever
happened TO ME. So, I feel the way I feel."
And you know what?
She’s right. Yeah I’m going to
continue to feel horrible that I have any stress about the issue at all, but
the fact of the matter is this: I was in
a situation over which I had no control and I was woefully unequipped to
handle. Now, 11 years later, the
reminders always bring some certain level of stress. The vacant lots where
houses once stood (there is one directly across the street from my house) keep
my anxiety present, though at a low level.
But the phone. OMG the
phone.
For weeks after the storm, I talked on the phone. For HOURS –
at least 8, sometimes 12, sometimes MORE- EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. To people who had lost everything. To the woman who climbed in her attic to
escape the flood and had to watch her 80-year-old mother drown. To the woman who was staying at a friend’s
house when someone else staying there committed suicide. To the man whose dog
died along with many others in the back of a semi-trailer full of pets being
evacuated when the air conditioning went out in the trailer and the driver didn’t
know. To the people who had lost their houses AND their jobs, and maybe did not know if everyone they loved were even alive. To people crying,
sad, panicked, terrified. Just terrified.
All day. Every day. And the phone connections were HORRID. Dropped calls constantly. Busy signals, busy signals, busy signals, CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED, static.....static...
I was not equipped. I
broke out in hives from the stress and had to get steroid shots. I looked like I had the measles. That is the only time that has ever happened
to me.
My job during those calls, as a Federal Financial
Institutions Examiner, was to get these people – these scared, devastated
people – to open their financial institution.
Sounds callous, right? But it
truly wasn’t – their members were also devastated and scared and needed access
to their money. We got that job done,
and I am still not ready to really talk about that part of it. The point is, people got to their money, we
tried to help in any way possible, and we did everything we could possibly
think of to do to ease the burden of what we were asking.
Again let me say - I am an ACCOUNTANT. Once, I had to take a personality test for
work. It ranked 50 personality traits. Empathy was one of the traits. It was number 49 on my list.
And yes, I supposed that probably APPEARS true, but I think
it is actually a rebound result. I think
perhaps I have purposely suppressed my empathy as much as I possibly can in
order to just FUNCTION. It still peaks
through where I can’t control it. I can’t watch anything on TV where an animal
gets hurt. I can’t even watch
Bambi. It tears my HEART OUT and I can’t
take it. I can’t STAND to see anyone in actual physical pain, or even watch an
actor pretend to be in physical pain. Any scenes like that just play over and
over and over on a loop in my head until I feel like I’m losing my mind.
And as for actual, real-live people being in emotional pain? Well, I’ve just been able to pretty much
AVOID that my whole life.
Except for after Katrina, when I had no choice but to talk
to people and hear their stories and cry with them and be scared for them. It ripped my soul out, and still does.
The other day I was in a store with Mom and my friend
Shannon when the talk amongst the patrons and owners of the store turned to
Katrina. After just a few minutes, my
anxiety was at about a 6, and I just walked outside and removed myself from the
conversation. I can’t always do
that.
My point is this: My
lingering anxiety about this is real, I can’t control it. Yes, I still feel incredibly guilty for having
any anxiety about it at all, but there is it.
I was thrust in to a situation I was not equipped to handle, and I did
not handle it well. A ringing phone, a
bad connection, a dropped call, all bring it rushing back to me and deposit me
right back in to the hotel conference room. I can still hear the pain in those people’s
voices and see it in their eyes when I finally did get to meet with them. Yes,
they were work associates, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t care deeply about
each and every one of them. And I still
do.
And NO, none of us are “over it yet”. None of us ever will be.
Call me a weenie, a wuss, over-emotional, whatever. You can do your part in keeping my anxiety
under control by 1> TEXT ME, for the LOVE OF GOD, just TEXT ME 2> Do not
say things like “aren’t y’all over that yet”, and 3> if you do see me
panicking on the phone, just pat me on the head and tell me it’s all going to
be ok. One of the positive lessons I
learned through this experience (and yes, there were many) is that a little bit
of compassion really DOES go a long way.